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3. Jesus Performed Miracles in the Early Sources
It was already noted in detail that for some of the non-biblical religious founders,
performing miracles was not even part of their ethical and/or social message, particularly if they
did not share a supernatural view of reality in the first place. Further, most if not all of the chief
holy books that report the major religious founders’ teachings and actions present severe
historical problems. These issues are often due either to the texts being written centuries after
their founders died, and/or to the earliest extant copies of these works being dated even far too
long after that to insure that no major changes occurred during the process of transmission. 59
On the latter points, Buddhist scholar Edward Conze notes that many of the major
writings of Buddha’s teachings date from 600 to 900 years after Buddha’s death, with oral
teachings being the norm for the first 500 years. Conze then states clearly the corresponding
issue that this causes: some of these myriad volumes of teaching must actually represent
Buddha’s originally teachings. The problem is that “we have, however, no objective criterion
which would allow us to isolate the original gospel. All attempts to find it are based on mere
surmise, and the discussion of the subject generally leads to nothing but ill will and fruitless
disputes.” 60
In other words, at least some of Buddha’s original teachings must be among the
58 Of course, across the broad spectrum of liberal, moderate, and conservative views on these and related subjects,
there are a variety of positions on the question of an individual scholar’s views on the issue of Jesus’ deity. We are
not addressing the personal question here, though we have argued above several indications that Jesus taught his
own deity, and that view is undergoing a bit of a renaissance at present.
59 We may recall Frazier’s note on the growth of, “Superstition, magic, and mythological beings” that “were
entirely absent from early Buddhism” but which were included during the centuries after Christianity first began,
which would have been about the time that many of the texts were actually written (Frazier, Chinese and Japanese
Religions, 25-26).
60 Buddhist Scriptures, ed. and trans. by Edward Conze, Penguin Classics, ed. by Betty Radice (London: Penguin,
1959), 11-12. Edwin M. Yamauchi places the possibility of some Buddhist supernatural elements a bit earlier than
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